Group items tagged

"Es ist möglich, dass eine frühzeitige Exposition gegenüber Antibiotika den Stoffwechsel von Kindern umprogrammiert, sodass Übergewicht im späteren Leben entstehen kann", sagt Co-Autor Martin Blaser von der New York University School of Medicine. Er betont, dass noch weitere Forschung nötig sei, um diese Theorie zu bestätigen. Klar sei aber bereits: Alles was die Darmflora beeinflussen kann, sollte vorsichtig behandelt werden. Ilseung Cho (New York University School of Medicine) et al.: Nature, doi:10.1038/nature11400"

"The project was kick-started by a huge public response to the team's research into the genetics of gut bacteria. In a previous study the researchers found that certain gut-specific genetic markers were related to obesity and other diseases. "I got between 50 and 100 e-mails from regular people having problems with the stomach or diarrhoea and wondering if we can help them," Peer Bork, a biochemist and co-creator of MyMicrobes, told Nature. This new website will build on that work, whilst also providing support for concerned members of the public."

""We probably have underestimated the role our microbial flora play in modulating disease risk," says Daniel Rader, a heart disease specialist at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Rader, who was not involved in the study, says that gut bacteria may not be as big a factor in causing heart disease as diabetes or smoking, but could be important in tipping some people toward sickness. Researchers led by Stanley Hazen, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic, didn't start out to study gut bacteria. In fact, says Hazen, he had "no clue - zero," that intestinal microbes were involved in heart disease. "I'd never even considered it or thought of the concept." Hazen and his colleagues compared blood plasma from healthy people to plasma from people who had had heart attacks, strokes or died to see if substances in the blood could predict who is in danger from heart disease. The researchers found 18 small molecules associated with fat buildup in the arteries. One of the best predictors turned out to be a byproduct made when gut bacteria break down a fat called choline (also known as lecithin). The more of this byproduct, called trimethylamine N-oxide or TMAO, a person or mouse has in the blood, the higher the risk of getting heart disease, the researchers found. Gut bacteria are actually middlemen in TMAO production. The microbes convert lecithin to a gas that smells like rotten fish. Then an enzyme in the liver changes the foul-smelling gas to TMAO."

"But, "one has to be cautious. This is exciting science in rodents, but you can't just extrapolate to humans," says Emeran Mayer, a gastroenterologist and neuroscientist at UCLA's Center for Neurobiology of Stress who was not involved in the new study. Drug and food companies that make probiotics - beneficial bacteria taken in a pill or eaten in food such as yogurt - hope the products can help relieve depression, improve weight loss and cure other conditions, but there is little evidence in people that probiotics can accomplish those goals, Mayer says. "It's almost like science fiction; you can imagine the most amazing things because so little is known about it," he says. But, "So far there's really no evidence that probiotics affect emotions in humans." "

Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) is an open source middleware system for volunteer and grid computing. It was originally developed to support the SETI@home project before it became useful as a platform for other distributed applications in areas as diverse as mathematics, medicine, molecular biology, climatology, and astrophysics. The intent of BOINC is to make it possible for researchers to tap into the enormous processing power of personal computers around the world.

A recent article in Scientific American questioned whether research on stem cell lines derived from unfertilized eggs was too tightly regulated by the federal government. Now that technology allows the creation of stem cells without fertilization, there is no question that federal laws and guidelines are overly restrictive, causing a detrimental effect on valuable scientific inquiry.

"Schwarzfahrer-Problem. sueddeutsche.de: Was bedeutet das? Voland: Jemand nimmt die Vorteile einer Freundschaft oder eines Sozialwesens in Anspruch, investiert selbst aber ungern. Bei der Steuererklärung zum Beispiel wird gern ein bisschen gemogelt. Die Vorteile eines Gemeinwesens nimmt man aber in Anspruch. In einem System der Gegenseitigkeit besteht diese Gefahr grundsätzlich. sueddeutsche.de: Müssen wir uns also von der Idee der Reziprozität verabschieden? Voland: Nicht ganz. Gelegentlich greift die Reziprozität bei Menschen schon. Aber man weiß ja, wie schnell selbst Freundschaften zerbrechen, wenn eine Seite zu wenig investiert. Wir sind da hochgradig selektiv und sensibel und legen eine sehr hohe Messlatte an."

"Leah Pyter: Well basically what we know is that patients with cancer have a higher likelihood of also developing depression at some point in their disease progression, so whether that occurred before and is predisposing them to cancer, or it's due to the tumours themselves, or other aspects of having the disease, we don't know. We were only studying right now whether the cancer itself can cause depression. Chris Smith: How could a tumour trigger depression, because a tumour can occur anywhere in the body, therefore at the remote sites in the brain, so how could it trigger changes in brain activity? Leah Pyter: Sure, well what we hypothesized was that the tumours themselves can produce cytokines which has been shown before. Chris Smith: These are inflammatory chemicals that drive the immune system? Leah Pyter: Right, exactly! And there is also a pile of research on how cytokines can access the brain specifically regions of the brain that are associated with depression and anxiety and emotional behaviours, and they can access the brain both tumourally through the blood, or neurally through the vegas nerves. "

"Um das Gedächtnis auf Trab zu halten, lösen gerade ältere Menschen oft Kreuzworträtsel oder Sudokus. Das ist laut der neuen Studie von Dewar und ihren Kollegen nicht die Ideallösung, zumindest nicht, wenn direkt nach dem Erlernen der Neuigkeit gespielt wird. Einfach einmal zehn Minuten hinsetzen und nichts tun ist besser - denn dann hat das Gehirn Zeit und Ruhe, sich das neu Erlernte einzuprägen. Das Team von der University of Edinburgh hat dazu zwei Studien durchgeführt. In der ersten erzählten die Wissenschaftler älteren Menschen zwischen 61 und 87 Jahren zwei Kurzgeschichten. Danach durfte eine Gruppe zehn Minuten in einem dunklen Raum pausieren, während die andere ein „Finde den Unterschied"-Spiel am Computer spielte. Anschließend sollten die Probanden die Geschichte möglichst detailgetreu nacherzählen. Nach einer Woche forderten die Forscher sie erneut dazu auf."

"Slow science was pretty much the only science conceivable for hundreds of years; today, we argue, it deserves revival and needs protection. Society should give scientists the time they need, but more importantly, scientists must take their time."

""Frauen fühlen sich von einer Hebamme besser betreut, wenn die etwas macht oder ihnen etwas gibt. Das ist bei einem Arzt nicht anders", sagt Regine Knobloch, beratende Hebamme beim Deutschen Hebammenverband. In Deutschland spiele auch der Wettbewerb unter Hebammen eine Rolle, sagt Knobloch. Wer in der Begleitung von Schwangeren oder der Wochenbettbetreuung keine Homöopathie, Aromatherapie oder ähnliche Verfahren anbiete, finde womöglich weniger Kundinnen. Der Einsatz alternativer Therapien sei "kongruent mit der Philosophie von Hebammen", schreibt Helen Hall etwas sperrig. Was das heißt? "Viele sehen sich in der Tradition alter Kräuterfrauen, die Hebammen früher waren", sagt Knobloch. "Gleichzeitig fechten Hebammen seit mindestens dem 18. Jahrhundert einen Macht- und Verteilungskampf mit der Ärzteschaft aus", sagt der Historiker Robert Jütt"

"Die Forscher erzeugten sie aus einem synthetischen Gerüst, bestückt mit Stammzellen aus dem Knochenmark des Patienten. Die Besiedelung mit eigenen Stammzellen soll dabei ein lebendiges Gewebe ermöglichen und gleichzeitig verhindern, dass das Organ vom Immunsystem abgestoßen wird. In einem speziellen Bioreaktor wurde das Gerüstmaterial mit einer stammzellhaltigen Flüssigkeit 36 Stunden lang benetzt. Die Zellen setzten sich dabei in die Poren des Trägermaterials und wuchsen ineinander. Das fertige Hybrid-Organ verpflanzten die Forscher dann nach Entfernung des Tumors in einer zwölfstündigen Operation. In der Luftröhre haben sich mittlerweile neue Blutgefäße gebildet, was dafür spreche, dass die Stammzellen langfristig angewachsen seien"

"For this study, the investigators bred mice lacking TRPV4 or administered a drug to deactivate it. In the absence of TRPV4, white cells turned on a set of genes that consume energy to produce heat, rather than storing the energy as excess fat. This "thermogenic" process normally occurs in brown or beige fat (commonly called "good fat"), which is found mostly in small animals and human infants to protect against cold. When the TRPV4-deficient mice were put on a high-calorie diet for several weeks, they did not become obese, and their level of fat cell inflammation and insulin resistance was lowered. "We have identified a target that, when inhibited, can activate beige adipose tissue and suppress inflammation," said Spiegelman."

Dr Simon Archer and his team at Surrey University were particularly interested in looking at the genes that were switched on or off in our volunteers by changes in the amount that we had made them sleep. "We found that overall there were around 500 genes that were affected," Archer explained. "Some which were going up, and some which were going down." What they discovered is that when the volunteers cut back from seven-and-a-half to six-and-a-half hours' sleep a night, genes that are associated with processes like inflammation, immune response and response to stress became more active. The team also saw increases in the activity of genes associated with diabetes and risk of cancer. The reverse happened when the volunteers added an hour of sleep. So the clear message from this experiment was that if you are getting less than seven hours' sleep a night and can alter your sleep habits, even just a little bit, it could make you healthier

"Sehr lesenswert sind unserer Meinung nach die Artikel des Biologen und Bienenexperten Randy Oliver, der ein regelmäßiger Autor im American Bee Journal ist. Auf seiner Homepage "Scientific Beekeeper" findet man zwei hochinteressante Artikel, auf die wir an dieser Stelle verweisen möchten: Neonicotinoids: Trying To Make Sense of the Science Neonicotinoids: Trying To Make Sense of the Science - Part 2 Er listet viele Studien zum CCD und zu Neonicotinoiden und schreibt, dass etliche mit einer gehörigen Portion Voreingenommenheit in die eine oder andere Richtung behaftet sind. Manche spielen die Wirkung der Neonicotinoide hinunter, andere versuchen zu beweisen, dass diese Giftstoffe die zentrale Schuld am Bienensterben tragen. In einem spannenden Artikel von April 2013, bei dem er sich vor allem damit auseinandersetzt, was "dieses Frühjahr mit den Bienen geschah", vergleicht er die Bienenverluste mit der Verwendung von Neonicotinoiden. Er findet dabei eine Korrelation von 2006 bis 2009, aber 2010 dreht sich der Trend: mehr Neonicotinoide als im Vorjahr werden eingesetzt und wesentlich weniger Bienen verenden"

"He then asked a bunch of radiologists to review the slides of lungs for cancerous nodules. He wanted to see if they would notice a gorilla the size of a matchbook glaring angrily at them from inside the slide. But they didn't: 83 percent of the radiologists missed it, Drew says. This wasn't because the eyes of the radiologists didn't happen to fall on the large, angry gorilla. Instead, the problem was in the way their brains had framed what they were doing. They were looking for cancer nodules, not gorillas. "They look right at it, but because they're not looking for a gorilla, they don't see that it's a gorilla," Drew says. In other words, what we're thinking about - what we're focused on - filters the world around us so aggressively that it literally shapes what we see"

" Das belege erstmals, dass Elektroakupunktur tatsächlich die physiologischen Folgen von chronischem Stress lindern kann - und dass eine Scheinakupunktur diesen Effekt nicht habe. Nach Ansicht der Forscher sind ihre Ergebnisse zumindest ein Indiz dafür, dass Akupunktur auch beim Menschen gegen chronischen Stress wirken könnte. Allerdings müsse man erst noch in klinischen Studien testen, ob der bei Ratten beobachtete Effekt auch beim Menschen auftrete. "Aber wir beginnen nun zumindest zu verstehen, was bei der Akupunktur auf molekularer Ebene passiert", sagt Eshkevari. #placebo !?!? Ladan Eshkevari (Georgetown University, Washington DC.) et al., Journal of Endocrinology, doi: 10.1530/JOE-12-0404 "

"Cellendes continously expands the 3-D Life product line to provide an innovative and increasingly comprehensive technology for a broad range of applications in 3-D cell culture. Cellendes seeks collaborations with academic and industrial partners to explore and develop the use of the 3-D Life technology in complex cell-based assays and tissue models for drug screening as well as in biomedical engineering. Cellendes was founded in 2009 by Dr. Brigitte Angres and Dr. Helmut Wurst. Cellendes is a spinoff company of the NMI Natural and Medical Sciences Institute at the University of Tübingen."

""A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for." By Christie Wilcox | February 14, 2013 A year and a half ago, the decision to pack up shop at ScienceBlogs and begin blogging at Scientific American was an easy one. The inimitable Bora Zivkovic had assembled a blogging dream team, a group of people I respected and admired and couldn't wait to call networkmates. Under Bora's nurturing oversight, we all have flourished, and the SciAm blog network has become the most diverse and prolific science blogging network around"

"There is a "significant credibility gap" between researchers' expectations and the likelihood of their forging long-term careers in higher education, a survey has found. More than three-quarters of research staff responding to the Careers in Research Online Survey 2013 said they aspired to a career in higher education and around two-thirds said they expected to achieve this. But it was "unrealistic to expect" that this number of research staff, or even half of those in the early stages of their career, would be able to secure a long-term research role in higher education, says the report, based on the survey produced by Vitae, the careers organisation for researchers."